{687}

It would be wholly superfluous to address an argument to any

portion of the American people upon the absolute necessity of

popular education. Upon that point there is no diversity of

opinion. The fundamental principles of our social system rest

upon it as a corner-stone; such as, that government derives all

of its authority, under God, from the consent of the governed;

the people possess the sovereignty; public officers are only

public servants; the multitude rules by representation; Congress,

the President, and the Courts are the people--without the people

they have no existence; constitutions and laws are but the

well-ordered expression of the public will, at all times

revocable, in an orderly manner, and binding upon each citizen as

the will of all, unless the popular decree be against the law of

God, when, of course, it bind's no man's conscience. Hereditary

rights, class privileges, ancient social divisions, and

distributions of power have all disappeared, or rather, have

never existed here. Even in Colonial times, the Crown was almost

a myth, and cast but a shadowy reflection into the deep waters of

the Hudson and the Mississippi, as they rolled on to the sea from

the illimitable forests where the moccasined hunter was then as

free as the Red Indian had been for unrecorded centuries. The

Revolution of '76 changed the government, but really left the

cardinal points of our American civilization very much as it

found them. In fact, our political education is traceable back to

the days of Alfred and Edward the Confessor; for the Norman king

gave us no concession in Magna Charta which was unknown to Saxon

liberty. In our Republic we have only drawn out these principles

to their extreme conclusions. We have gone back to the original

hypothesis, that society is an association of equal rights for

mutual protection; and that power, under God, belongs to the

whole body of corporators--that is, the multitude. From this

postulate we are obliged to pass immediately to the axiom that

there can be no fit administration of power without knowledge.

Knowledge may be acquired in several ways. The most direct and

impressive is experience. Alcuin was master of books; but

Charlemagne was master of men. The great emperor could not read,

but he possessed the wisdom to govern. Who shall say that he was

not "educated" in the highest sense of that vague term? And yet,

it is very clear that knowledge gained only by the slow

accretions of experience will not answer the wants and rapid

movements of such a republic as ours in the age of steam and

electricity. Each generation must be trained from the cradle, and

made to possess, enlarge, and transmit to its successor all the

accumulated knowledge of its predecessor. As no atom of matter

perishes, but is for ever recombining and reproducing; so every

true idea and sound moral sentiment must be made the inheritance

of society, and never cease to exert its power for good among

men. Not that moral truth can ever change; for it is now

precisely what it has been from all eternity; nor is it better

understood by the divine to-day, than it was by Moses when he

came down from the mountain; but the multitude may be made more

fully to comprehend and reverence it. Christianity, although

specially revealed and miraculously propagated, did not suddenly

conquer and civilize barbarous peoples. It has been eighteen

hundred years struggling with the powers of darkness and the

corruption of the human heart; and yet, alas! how very, very far

removed are not even the most polished nations from the severe

standard of Christian perfection! See the tyrannies, the

oppressions, the cruelties, the wars, the pride, the luxury, the

folly and deceit which fill the fairest parts of the earth with

mourning, and drag mankind down into the slough of sin and

sorrow! To be sure, there is a certain stereotyped class of

saints and philosophers who cry aloud, "Compare our enlightened

era with the rude times of the crusaders; or place the nineteenth

alongside of the ninth century; and let the celestial light of

our civilization shine down into the abysses of monkish

superstition!" We shall, nevertheless, refuse to close our eyes

to those stupendous sins which have supplanted the violent crimes

of our ancestors. We shall see how their robber-sword has been

put aside for our forger's pen; how their wild foray has given

place to our gigantic stock speculation or bank swindle, which

sweeps widows and orphans, by the ten thousand, into utter

poverty and despair; how their fierce lust has been civilized

into the decorous forms of the divorce courts;

{688}

how their bold grasping of power has been changed into the arts

of the whining demagogue; how their undisguised plunder of the

public treasure in times of civil commotion has been superseded

by the adroit peculation and covert bribery of our times of

peace; how their courageous, rude anger has vanished before the

safer and more efficacious process of concealed hatred, nestling,

like the scorpion, among the roses of adulation. We certainly

shall be obliged to remember these things, to the great reproach

of our times, and in serious dread of the future; and we shall

feel anxious to go to work to find the cause and the remedy. We

are all agreed that education, that is, knowledge and moral

training, cannot be dispensed with for an hour--that no nation

can be governed safely, much less govern itself at all, without a

clear head and a sound heart--that, if governed as a dumb brute,

it will kick against the pricks, fly in the face of its hard

master, and dash out its foolish brains against the stone wall!

It will sing the _Marseillaise_ and cover its garments with

the blood of kings and aristocrats; until, having spent its fury,

it will return to its crust and shout "Vive l'Empereur!" Should

it attempt to govern itself, it will become the prey of the

infamous men who are the spawn of its own passions. Without

knowledge, the nation is either a silent sepulchre, where all

hopes are buried, or a raging sea, where they are quickly

wrecked. Knowledge, then, _it must have_. But _what_

knowledge? Shall we say, knowledge of the arts? Ask Phidias and

Praxiteles if the arts saved Greece! Shall we say, polite

literature? Ah! let the mournful chorus of Sophocles, AEschylus

and Euripides give utterance to the sad cries of those old pagan

hearts for a higher virtue than the sublimest tragedy could teach

them! Shall it be the eloquence of the orator or the wisdom of

the legislator? We shall hear in the Philippics how vainly the

master of orators appealed to a degenerate race, and we shall

read in the closing annals of Athens and Sparta how utterly the

wisdom of Solon and Lycurgus had failed to save polished and

warlike states from the penalty which God has affixed to the

crimes of nations. Shall we take refuge in human philosophy?

Socrates and the divine Plato had cast off the degrading

superstitions of paganism, and had proclaimed to their

intellectual countrymen the eternity and unity of God, and the

immortality of the soul of man. They had most earnestly enjoined

upon them the sanctity of all the natural virtues--temperance,

industry, patience, courage, honesty, benevolence, patriotism,

continence, filial duty, conjugal fidelity; but what did their

philosophy avail? Why did it not save the Grecian states? They

went down into the night upon which no sun ever again shone!

Their Roman conquerors seized upon the rich treasures of their

knowledge. The Senate listened with rapture to the wisdom of the

old Hellenic sages translated by Cicero into the noble Latin

tongue. Virgil and Livy sought to inspire the Roman heart with

grand ideas borrowed from the Greek masters. What did it all

avail? The Roman republic had practised the natural virtues as

fully as unregenerated man is capable of doing by the power of

vigorous and cultivated reason. What did it avail? They, too,

went down into the tomb of dead nations; and a few broken columns

remain to mark the seat of their world-wide empire!

{689}

It is very manifest, then, that intellectual culture, even when

carried to the highest development of which men are capable, can

never subdue their passions, nor enable them to uphold the

civilization to which they may have attained in the freshness of

their national life. If this were not so, then we could not

clearly perceive the necessity of the Christian revelation. If

man was self-sustaining, he would not require the arm of God to

lean upon. The apothegm of the Greek sage, "_Know thyself_,"

was a dead letter. It was precisely to teach a man how to know

himself that our Saviour came. And this is the whole knowledge!

No poetry, oratory, history, philosophy, arts, or sciences could

teach that, else the world would have learned it four thousand

years ago, and the primitive races would not have perished. Even

under the Christian dispensation, and in very modern times, men

and nations have failed to know themselves, because they turned

their backs on Christ and placed their hopes in human science and

natural virtue. And so we have seen an enlightened nation in our

day deify humanity, refuse to adore God, and prostrate itself

before a harlot, as the high-priestess in the apotheosis of

Reason! We have seen an antichristian conspiracy, formed of the

most learned, eloquent, witty, and fascinating men of modern

Europe, exerting the highest arts of genius to repaganize the

world. We have seen science, rudely torn from religion, waging an

insane war against the peace of society. That terrific phase of

blasphemous infidelity has passed from our immediate view; but

has it left nothing more dangerous behind? We think it has. The

mass of mankind shrank with horror from the defiant blasphemy of

Voltaire; and they recoiled with alarm from the ruin caused by

his teachings. We love liberty; but we dread license, anarchy,

chaos. Man is, also, naturally religious. Long after he had

forgotten the traditions of the patriarchs and had lost God in

the night of heathen idolatry, he still clung to

"The instinct of old reverence!"

and his wretched soul yearned after its Creator.

The false worship of Greece and Rome was the inarticulate cry of

a lost people for that true worship which was promised to the

Gentile at the appointed time. False and hideous as it was, who

will not say that it was far preferable to atheism? It was only

when the Epicurean philosophy had destroyed the faith of those

people, that they cast off all moral restraint, and were swept

away in the torrent of their vices. Man is naturally religious;

and therefore the world will not long patiently tolerate the

presence of blatant infidelity. _The danger is not there_.

He who goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may

devour, knows very well that mankind is more easily seduced under

the forms of virtue than by gross sin. His incarnate agents on

earth know this too. Hence we find all the world covered over

with gossamer nets of seduction! The press teems with books and

journals, not confessedly infidel, yet working in the interests

of infidelity; fanning the passions and exciting the morbid

sensibilities of youth; teaching religious indifference under the

pleasing garb of liberality; holding up the discipline of the

church as hostile to personal freedom; depicting the doctrines

and ceremonies of the Christian religion as trammels upon mental

activity and intellectual progress; arraying the laity against

their pastors; insisting that to be a humane man, an honest and

industrious worker, a faithful friend, a good husband and father,

a patriotic citizen, is to be all and to do all that the highest

Christian morality can require or the welfare of the human race

demand; asserting that the specific dogmas of the Christian

faith, with perhaps one or two exceptions, are not essential, and

may be rejected without concern; receiving with indifference and

polite complacency either the divinity or the humanity of Christ;

and accepting him as a God-Saviour, a man-prophet, or a harmless,

self-deluded impostor, as your fancy may please to dictate; in a

word, deifying man, and making this world, with its wealth, its

pleasures, its pride and pomp, its power and magnificence, its

civilization and nationalities, the sole object of his anxiety

and love.

{690}

Such, we say, is the growing evil of this nineteenth century,

which is so scornful of the "dark ages;" an evil infinitely more

subtile and destructive than the rage or gibes of Voltaire. This

poison has gone through the chilled blood of renegade old men,

destroying the religious vitality which had sustained their faith

from the baptismal font to the very edge of the grave; how must

it not, therefore, affect the hot veins of inexperienced youth,

whose generous impulses are their greatest peril! See how, in

those European revolutions gotten up by avowed enemies of

religion, the students of the universities flock to the standards

of infidelity, with the seductive cry of "_Liberty, Equality,

Fraternity!_" They enlist, with enthusiasm, under what they

believe to be the consecrated banner of inalienable human

rights--their young, sympathetic hearts are justly moved by the

sufferings of the toiling millions caused by unequal laws--their

sense of justice and human brotherhood is outraged at the sight

of domineering classes who monopolize the blessings of

government--they see very clearly all the existing wrongs, but

they do not see the practicable and wise remedies; and when they

hear prudent voices counselling patience, and reminding them that

the evil works of centuries, like old forest trees, have deep

roots, and cannot be rudely torn out of the bosom of society

without endangering its life, they cry out in their enthusiasm,

"These are the voices of the enemies of the people, the voices of

priests and aristocrats, away with them to the guillotine!" Only

too late do they experience the retribution which God invariably

visits upon those who presumptuously seek to drive the chariot of

his Providence!

Not one word of what we have said is inapplicable to our own

land. We live, move, and have our whole being in the midst of

these same perils. Steam, electricity, commerce, and emigration

have made us a part of the great European family. Every throb of

their heart is felt in our own bosom. We are of their blood and

civilization. We have their laws and their religion. We are

nurtured by their science and literature. From us they have

received more thorough ideas of democratic freedom, but from them

we have derived all else that constitutes the intellectual life

of man. It would be the height of folly in us to despise the

lessons of their experience. Our children should be carefully

instructed in all of it. They have a difficult task to perform in

perpetuating our institutions as they were shaped by the fathers

of the Republic. They must be well trained in the knowledge

necessary for that purpose. From what has already been said it

will be at once understood that we do not mean human science

alone, _nor principally_. The beginning of wisdom is the

fear of the Lord.

{691}

This brings us to the consideration of the immediate subject of

this article; which can now, we think, be briefly stated;

inasmuch as the foundation has been properly laid, if our views

are correct as to the principles which we have presented.

Enlightened rulers all over Europe have been profoundly impressed

with the lessons of this and the last century. It was once

believed by monarchs that to enlighten their subjects would be to

imperil their thrones. It is now very clearly seen that "the

divinity which doth hedge a king" has long ceased to be an oracle

to the people. The French emperor erects his dynasty upon popular

suffrage. Hereditary right has come down from its ancient

pedestal to accept from the people the confirmation of its

authority. It is now too evident for further doubt that no ruler

can rule modern nations by any appeal to the mausoleum of his

ancestors. The garish light of the sun has penetrated every royal

tomb, and has altogether annihilated the mystery which once

filled the hearts of nations with awe and unquestioning

obedience. Public opinion now rules the ruler. Kings and their

ministers have now to elect between intelligent and virtuous

opinion on the one hand, or revolutionary passions on the other.

The wisest of them, therefore, are hastening to educate the

people; and they are striving above all things to make such

education distinctly _Christian_, and not simply

_moral_; for they well remember the fate of all nations who

have staked their salvation upon the sufficiency of the natural

virtues. While kings are doing this to preserve the shadow of

their royalty from the aggressive spirit of the age, we, in this

chosen land, are doing or aiming to do the same thing, in order

that we may rear successive generations of virtuous and

enlightened heirs to the rich inheritance of our constitutional

democratic freedom. Ours should be much the easier task; as we

labor for no dynasty, but strive only to make a nation capable of

self-preservation. We are no less in earnest than the kings; and

we may surely examine their work and see what is good in it. The

kings tried the pagan idea of intellectual culture adorned with

the glittering generalities of moral philosophy; and they added

to it the maxims of the Christian gospel, whenever that could be

done without getting entangled in the conflicting creeds of the

numerous sects. The school was like Plato's lecture-room, only

that the sacred voice of the evangelist was heard occasionally in

such passages as do not distinctly set forth faith and doctrine,

about which the scholars could differ. Sectarianism, as it is

called, had to be excluded, of course, in a mixed system of

popular education, wherein freedom of conscience was conceded to

be a sacred right and proselytism was disavowed. The result was

twofold: first, tens of thousands of children were deprived of

distinct religious instruction and doctrinal knowledge; and

secondly, in countries where the Roman Catholic population was

large, though in a minority, other tens of thousands were left

without secular education, because their parents would not permit

them to be brought up in habits of indifferentism, which means

practical infidelity, or trained in knowledge hostile to their

religious faith. Prussia, though she is the very embodiment and

representative of Protestant Europe, soon came to the conclusion

that this would not do--that education must be Christian--that it

must be doctrinal and conducive to religious practices--that, as

all could not or would not believe alike, each should have full

opportunity to be reared in his own faith, to learn its doctrines

and to fulfil its duties and discipline--and, therefore, that

enlightened government established the denominational system,

giving to each creed practical equality before the law, a

separate school organization, (wherever numbers made it

practicable,) and a ratable share of the public school-fund;

reserving to the government only a general supervision, so as to

secure a faithful application of the public money, and to enforce

a proper compliance with the educational standard. The public

schools are organized so that every citizen shall obtain the

complete education of his child, in the faith and practice of his

own church. All difficulties have disappeared, and perfect

harmony prevails.

{692}

In France, by the last census, the population was thirty-seven

millions, divided about as follows: 480,000 Calvinists, 267,000

Lutherans, 30,000 of other Protestant sects, and 73,000 Jews; the

remaining thirty-six millions being either practically or

nominally Catholic. Although the dissenters from the national

faith are less than one million, that government has provided for

them, at the public expense, separate primary schools, where each

sect is at full liberty to teach its own doctrines. There are

likewise three seminaries for the higher education of Lutherans

and Calvinists.

Austria also supports schools, colleges, and universities for a

Protestant minority.

The British Government has likewise adopted the same principle of

public education for the Catholics and the Protestant dissenters

of England; while, with her traditional and malignant hatred of

the Irish people, she still denies them the justice which she

extends to all of her other subjects, at home or in the colonies,

even to the Hindoos and Mohammedans of her Indian empire!

And thus the most powerful and enlightened nations have decided

that Christian civilization cannot be maintained upon pagan

ideas; and that the safety of every commonwealth depends upon the

Christian education of the people. They have also clearly seen

that _doctrines, discipline, morals_, and "_the religious

atmosphere_" must be kept united, and made to penetrate and

surround the school at all times; and that, however greatly the

Christian denominations may differ from each other, or even err

in their belief, it is far better for society that their youth

should be instructed in some form of Christian doctrine, than be

left to perish in the dreary and soul-destroying wastes of deism.

Experience has proved to them that moral teaching, with biblical

illustrations, as the piety of Joseph, the heroism of Judith, the

penitence of David, will not suffice to establish the Christian

faith in young hearts, or to quiet the doubts of inquiring minds.

The subtle Gibbon, mocking the cross of Christ, will confront the

testimony of the martyrs with the heroes of pagan history.

Voltaire did the same for the French youth of the last century,

to their destruction. No. The experience of wise governments is

this: that _morals_ must be based upon _faith_, and

faith made efficient in deeds of practical virtue; for faith

worketh by charity. And another experience is this, which is best

given in the very words of the eminent Protestant statesman and

historian, M. Guizot: "_In order to make popular education

truly good and socially useful, it must be fundamentally

religions. I do not simply mean by this, that religious

instruction should hold its place in popular education and that

the practices of religion should enter into it; for a nation is

not religiously educated by such petty and mechanical devices; it

is necessary that national education should be given and received

in the midst of a religious atmosphere, and that religions

impressions and religious observances should penetrate into all

its parts. Religion is not a study or an exercise to be

restricted to a certain place and a certain hour; it is a faith

and a law, which ought to be felt everywhere, and which after

this manner alone can exercise all its beneficial influence upon

our minds and our lives_."

{693}

The meaning of which is, that not a moment of the hours of school

should be left without the religious influence. It is the

constant inhalation of the air which preserves our physical

vitality. It is the "_religious atmosphere_" which supports

the young soul. Religion cannot be made "_a study or an

exercise to be restricted to a certain place and a certain

hour_." It will not do to devote six days in the week to

science, and to depend upon the Sunday-school for the religious

training of the child. M. Guizot is right. The enlightened

governments of Europe have accepted his wisdom and reduced it to

practice in their great national school-systems.

Now, the Catholics of the United States have said no more than

that; have asked no more than that; and yet, a wild cry of anger

has been raised against them at times, as though they were the

avowed enemies of all popular education. They pay their full

quota of the public taxes which create the school-fund, and yet

they possess, to-day, in proportion to their wealth and numbers,

more parochial schools, seminaries, academies, colleges, and

universities, established and sustained exclusively by their own

private resources, than any other denomination of Christians in

this country! Certainly this is no evidence of hostility to

education! And why have they made these wonderful efforts, these

unprecedented sacrifices? It is because they believe in the truth

uttered by M. Guizot. It is because they believe in the truth

established by all history. It is because they believe in the

truth accepted and acted upon by enlightened men and governments

of this age. It is because they know that revealed religion is to

human science what eternity is to time. It is because they know

that the salvation of souls is more precious to Christ than the

knowledge of all the astronomers. It is because they know that

the welfare of nations is impossible without God. And yet, they

fully understand how religion has called science to her side as

an honored handmaid; how learning, chastened by humility,

conduces to Christian advancement; how the knowledge of good and

evil (the fruit of the forbidden tree) may yet be made to honor

God, when the sanctified soul rejects the evil and embraces the

good. Therefore the Catholic people desire denominational

education, as it is called.

That is the general view of the question; but there is a

particular view, not to be overlooked, and which we will now

briefly consider.

The most marked distinction between pagan and Christian society

is to be found in the relations which the state bears to the

family. Scarcely was the Lacedaemonian boy released from his

mother's apron-string, when the state seized him with an iron

hand. The state was thenceforth his father and his mother. The

sanctities and duties of the family were annihilated. Body and

soul, he belonged to the Moloch of Power. Private conscience was

no more than a piece of coin in circulation; it was a part of the

public property. Christ restored the family as it existed in Adam

and Eve. Christian civilization denies that the state can destroy

the family.

{694}

The family is primary; the father the head; the mother the

helpmate; the children in subjection, and for whom the parents

shall give an account to the Father in heaven. The Christian

state has no authority, by divine or human appointment, to invade

this trust. It has, therefore, no mission either to coerce

conscience or to dictate the education of it. It is the duty of

the state in every way to facilitate, but it cannot arbitrarily

control the mental and moral training of the people's children.

That right and that responsibility are domestical, and belong to

the parent.

Now, the Catholic parent is aware that there are between his

creed and all others the widest and most irreconcilable

differences, and that it is impossible to open the New Testament,

at almost any page, without forthwith encountering the prime

difficulty. To read the Bible, without note or comment, to young

children, is to abandon them to dangerous speculation, or to

leave them dry and barren of all Christian knowledge. In mixed

schools there is no other recourse; because it is impossible to

make any comment upon any doctrinal teaching of Christ and his

apostles, without trenching upon the conscientious opinions of

some one or other of the listeners. "The Father and I are one;"

"The Father is greater than I;" here at once we have the

Unitarian and the Trinitarian at a dead-lock!" This is my body;"

"It is the spirit which quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing;"

here we have the primitive Lutheran, who believed in the real

presence, (_consubstantially_,) and his Calvinistic

coadjutor in reform squarely at issue! "Unless you be born again

of water and the Holy Ghost," etc.; here we have the Baptist and

the Quaker very seriously divided in opinion. Nevertheless,

widely as they differ the one from the other, there is a

fundamental assimilation between all the Protestant sects, which

may render it possible for them to unite in one educational

organization; and yet, we find many of the most enlightened and

earnest among the Protestant clergy of America now zealously

advocating the denominational system, such as we find in the

European countries above referred to. They believe that education

should be distinctly based upon doctrinal religion; and they are

liberal enough to insist, that, by natural right, as well as by

the constitutional guarantees of our free country, no doctrine

adverse to the faith of a parent may lawfully be forced or

surreptitiously imposed upon his child. It is well known,

however, that, between the Catholic faith and all Protestant

creeds, there is a gulf which cannot be bridged over. It would,

therefore, be simply impossible to adopt any religious teaching

whatever in mixed schools without at once interfering with

Catholic conscience. No such teaching is attempted, as a general

rule, we believe, in the public schools of the United States; and

hence we have only a vague announcement of moral precepts, the

utter futility and barrenness of which we have already alluded

to. Catholics, agreeing with very many enlightened and zealous

Protestants, believe that secular education administered in that

way is not only vain, but eminently pernicious; that it is fast

undermining the Christian faith of this nation; that it is

rapidly filling the land with rationalism; that it is destroying

the authority of the Holy Scriptures; that it is educating men

who prefix "Reverend" and affix "D.D." to their names, the more

effectually to preach covert infidelity to Christian

congregations; that, instead of the saving morality of the gospel

of Christ, which rests upon revealed mysteries and supernatural

gifts, it is offering us that same old array of the natural

virtues or qualities which pierced, like broken reeds, the sides

of all heathen nations.

{695}

And more than this, Catholics know by painful experience, that

history cannot be compiled, travels written, poetry, oratory, or

romance inflicted upon a credulous public, without the

stereotyped assaults upon the doctrines, discipline, and

historical life of their church. From Walter Scott to Peter

Parley, and from Hume, Gibbon, and Macaulay, to the mechanical

compilers of cheap school-literature, it is the same story, told

a thousand times oftener than it is refuted; so that the English

language, for the last two centuries, may be said, without

exaggeration, to have waged war against the Catholic Church.

Indeed, so far as European history is considered, the difficulty

must always be insurmountable; since it would always be

impossible for the Catholic and Protestant to accept the same

history of the Reformation or of the Papal See, or the political,

social, and moral events resulting from or in any degree

connected with those two great centres and controlling causes.

Who could write a political history of Christendom for the last

three hundred years and omit all mention of Luther and the Pope?

And how is any school compendium of such history to be devised

for the use of the Catholic and Protestant child alike? And if

history be philosophy teaching by example, shall we expel it from

our educational plan altogether? Or shall we oblige the

Protestant child to study the Catholic version of history, and

_vice-versa?_ Certainly, it is quite as just and politic to

oblige the one as the other! Shall the "_majority_" control

this? Who gave "_majority_" any such power or right? With

us, the "_majority_" controls the "_state_;" and we

have seen that the "_state_" becomes a usurper when it

attempts this! We are quite sure that, if the Catholics were the

"_majority;_" in the United States, and were to attempt such

an injustice, our Protestant brethren would cry out against it,

and appeal to the wise and liberal examples of Prussia and

England, France and Austria! Now, is it not always as unwise, as

it is unjust, to make a minority taste the bitterness of

oppression? Men governed by the law of divine charity will bear

it meekly, and seek to return good for evil; but all men are not

docile; and majorities change sides rapidly and often in this

fleeting world! Is it not wiser and more politic, even in mere

regard to social interests, that all institutions, intended for

the welfare of the people, should be firmly based upon exact and

equal justice? This would place them under the protection of

_fixed habit_, which in a nation is as strong as nature; and

it would save them from the mutations of society. The strong of

one generation may be the weak of the next; and we see this

occurring with political parties within the brief spaces of

presidential terms. Hence we wisely inculcate moderation and

justice in political majorities, under the law of retribution.

Profoundly impressed with these views, and impelled by this

commanding sense of duty, our Catholic people have created a vast

network of schools over the country, _at a price_ which the

world knows little of--the sacrifice which the poor man makes,

who curtails the wheaten loaf that he may give to his child the

spiritual bread! Ah! how many humble cottages and dreary

tenement-houses could testify to that!

{696}

There are six millions of them here now; and still they come,

from the deserted hearths beyond the seas. They are upright,

industrious, and love the new land like the old! In war, they

shoulder the musket; in peace, they are found filling every

avenue of labor and enterprise. They contribute millions to the

public revenue, and hundreds of millions to the productive

industry of the country. Their own welfare and the highest

interests of the country demand that their children and their

children's children should be well instructed in secular

learning, and thoroughly grounded in moral and religious

knowledge. As we have shown, they cannot avail themselves of the

public school system, as now organized, though they contribute

largely to its support by their taxes. _They do not desire to

interfere with that system_, as it seems at present to meet

the wants, or at least the views, of their Protestant

fellow-citizens; and they are, therefore, _not_ "opposed to

the common schools" in the sense in which they have been

represented to be. They simply ask that they may be allowed to

participate in the only way open to them, that is, by the

apportionment to them of a ratable part of the fund, in aid of

their existing schools, and of such others as their numbers, in

any given locality, may properly enable them to establish,

subject to the limited supervision of the state, as we have

before explained. We need go no further than Canada to witness

this system operating harmoniously and to the best advantage. The

argument generally used against it is, that this would destroy

the unity and efficiency of the whole. Why is it not so in

Prussia, Austria, France, England, and the British Colonies?

Besides, the Catholic populations in this country are very much

aggregated, as in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, New York,

Brooklyn, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, Milwaukee, and in the

large agricultural settlements throughout the North-Western

States. Certainly, in such localities there could be no

difficulty. It is contemplated by the school law that all these

are to be educated. Then, why can they not be permitted to

organize separate schools, as in the countries referred to? Such

organization would be an integral part of the whole system; and

the cost would be precisely the same. In fact, we learn from the

Reports of Assistant Superintendents Jones and Calkins, made to

Hon. S. S. Randall, the City Superintendent, and also from his

Report made to the Hon. Board of Education, in December, 1866,

that the school room provided in the city of New York (especially

in the primary department) is altogether inadequate; and yet we

know that tens of thousands of Catholic children could easily be

cared for, if the means were afforded those who, even now, with

the scantiest resources, are erecting parochial schools all over

the city.

It would be impossible in a brief article to enter into details.

Our purpose has been rather to set this question before a liberal

public in its great leading aspects, as we are quite willing to

trust to the wisdom and experience of our legislators to devise

the proper plan and specifications. They will be at no loss for

precedents. The statute-books of half a dozen countries may be

consulted profitably. All we ask is, that this momentous question

may be candidly considered and justly and generously disposed of.

We hope that the day has gone by when such a question as this

shall be met with passionate declamation or the obsolete cry of

"no popery."

{697}

Disraeli has failed to stem the tide of popular reform in England

by reviving the insane clamor of Lord George Gordon. The world

has outgrown such narrow bigotry. Vital questions, affecting the

conscience and the rights of multitudes of men, and deeply

involving the welfare of nations, must henceforth be settled by

calm and just decisions. Christendom will tolerate nothing else

now. And surely, this free and wise Republic will not be the last

to put into practice those principles of equality before the law,

justice, and generous confidence in human nature, which it

published to all the down-trodden nationalities of the earth,

almost a century ago, over the signatures of Hancock, Livingston,

and Carroll of Carrollton.

----------

The Eclipse Of The Sun Of August 18, 1868.

A Report Addressed By M. Janssen To The Marshal Of France,

President Of The Bureau Of Longitudes.

Calcutta, November 3, 1868.

M. Le Maréchal Et Ministre:

I have the honor of addressing to you, as President of the Bureau

of Longitudes, my report on the eclipse of the 18th of last

August, and upon some subsequent observations, which led me to

the discovery of a method of observing the solar protuberances

when the sun is not eclipsed. I will beg you to have the kindness

to communicate this to the Bureau.

I have the honor to be, etc. etc.,

Janssen.

Mr. President:

I had the privilege of writing to you on the 19th of September

last, to give you a brief account of my expedition. I am now able

to furnish you with a more complete report of my observations

during the great eclipse of the 18th of August.

The steamer of the Messageries Imperiales, in which I left

France, landed me, on the 16th of July, at Madras, where I was

received by the English authorities with great courtesy. Lord

Napier, the governor of the province, gave me passage to

Masulipatam upon a government boat. Mr. Grahame, an assistant

collector, was sent with me to remove any difficulties which I

might meet with in the interior.

On arriving, I had to select my station.

A chart of the eclipse shows that the central line, after

crossing the Bay of Bengal, enters the peninsula of India at

Masulipatam, and crossing the great plains formed by the delta of

the Kistna, passes into a hilly country, containing several

chains of mountains, on the frontier of the independent state of

Nizzam. After receiving and considering much information on the

subject, I determined to choose the city of Guntoor, situated on

this central line, half-way between the mountains and the sea. I

thus avoided the sea-fogs, very frequent at Masulipatam, as well

as the clouds which often hang about lofty peaks.

{698}

Guntoor is quite an important place, being the centre of a large

cotton trade. This cotton comes mostly from Nizzam, and is

shipped to Europe from the ports of Cocanada and Masulipatam.

Several French merchants, with their families, live at Guntoor;

they are descended, generally speaking, from those ancient and

numerous families which in former times were the glory of our

beautiful Indian colonies.

My observatory was at the residence of M. Jules Lefaucheur, who

was so kind as to place at my disposal all the first story of his

house, which is in the highest and best part of the city. The

rooms of this first story communicated with a large terrace, upon

which I erected a temporary structure suitable for the

observations intended.

The instruments were several achromatic lenses of six inches

aperture, and a Foucault telescope of twenty-one centimetres. The

former were all mounted upon one stand. The general movement was

given by a mechanism constructed by Messrs. Brunner Bros., which

enabled one to follow the sun by a simple rotation.

The apparatus was furnished with finders of two and two and three

quarter inches aperture, which were themselves good astronomical

glasses. In spectral analysis, these finders have a peculiar

importance; for by means of them the precise point of the object

under examination is known, to which the slit of the spectroscope

in the principal telescope is directed. It is therefore necessary

that the cross-wires, or in general the sights placed in the

field of the finder, should correspond with great exactness with

the slit of the spectral apparatus, and I had, of course, taken

great care to secure this essential point. Special micrometers

were also provided, to measure rapidly the height and angle of

position of the protuberances. As for the spectroscopes, I had

chosen them of different magnifying powers, so as to answer to

the different requirements of the various phenomena. Finally, the

apparatus carried, at the eye-piece end, screens of black cloth,

forming a dark chamber, in order to preserve the sensibility of

the eye.

Besides these instruments, intended for the principal

observations, I had brought a full set of very delicate

thermometers, made with great skill by M. Baudin; also some

portable spy-glasses, hygrometers, barometers, etc. Thus I was

able to turn to account the kindness of MM. Jules, Arthur, and

William Lefaucheur, who offered their services for the subsidiary

work. M. Jules, who is a good draughtsman, undertook to sketch

the eclipse. An excellent telescope, of three inches aperture,

furnished with cross-wires, was assigned to his use; he practised

with it the representation of the expected phenomena by means of

artificial imitations of eclipses. The thermometric observations

were given to M. Arthur, who was also directed to ascertain the

brilliancy of the protuberances and of the corona at the moment

of totality, by a very simple photometric process.

I was assisted in my own operations by M. Redier, a young

subaltern, whom the commander of the steamer L'Imperatrice had

supplied to me. The services of M. Redier, who has excellent

observing qualities, were very useful to me.

The time which remained before the eclipse was employed in

preliminary study and practice, which served to familiarize us

with the handling of our instruments, and suggested to me various

improvements in them.

{699}

The day approached, but the weather did not promise to be

favorable. It had rained for some time all along the coast. These

rains were considered as extraordinary and exceptional.

Fortunately, they moderated gradually before the 18th; and on

that day the sun rose unclouded, and dimmed only by a mist out of

which it soon passed; and at the time when our telescopes showed

us that the eclipse began, it was shining with its full splendor.

Every one was at his post, and the observations immediately

commenced. During the first phases some thin vapors passed before

the sun, which interfered somewhat with the thermometric

measurements; but, as the moment of totality approached, the sky

became sufficiently clear.

Meanwhile the light diminished sensibly, surrounding objects

appearing as if seen by moonlight. The decisive moment was near,

and we waited for it with some anxiety; this anxiety took nothing

from our powers of observation, it rather stimulated and

increased them; and it was, besides, fully justified by the

grandeur of the spectacle which nature was preparing for us, and

by the consciousness that the fruits of our thorough preparations

and of a long voyage would depend on the use now made of a few

minutes.

The solar disc was soon reduced to a narrow bright arc, and we

redoubled our attention. The slits of the spectroscopes were kept

precisely upon the part of the moon's limb where the last light

of the sun would be seen, so that they would be directed to the

lower regions of the solar atmosphere at the moment of contact of

the discs.

The total obscuration occurred instantaneously, and the spectral

phenomena also changed immediately in a very remarkable manner.

Two spectra, formed of five or six very bright lines--red,

yellow, green, blue, and violet--occupied the field in place of

the prismatic image of the sun which had just disappeared. These

spectra, about one minute (of arc) long, corresponded line for

line, and were separated by a dark space in which I could see no

lines.

The finder showed that these two spectra were caused by two

magnificent protuberances which were now visible on each side of

the point of contact. One of them, that on the left, was more

than three minutes (or one tenth of the sun's diameter) in

height; it looked like the flame of a furnace, rushing violently

from the openings of the burning mass within, and driven by a

strong wind. The one to the right presented the appearance of a

mass of snowy mountains, with its base resting on the moon's

limb, and enlightened by a setting sun. These appearances have

been carefully drawn by M. Jules Lefaucheur. I will therefore

only remark before quitting the subject, which I shall have to

treat subsequently under a special aspect, that the preceding

observation shows at once:

1st. The gaseous nature of the protuberances, (the lines being

bright.)

2d. The general similarity of their chemical composition, (the

spectra corresponding line for line.)

3d. Their chemical species, (the red and blue lines of their

spectrum being no other than the lines C and F of the solar one,

and belonging, as is well known, to hydrogen gas.)

Let us now return to the dark space which separated the spectra

of these protuberances. It will be remembered that, at the moment

of the total obscuration, the slits were tangent to the solar and

lunar discs, and were therefore directed toward the circumsolar

regions immediately above the photosphere, in which regions M.

Kirchhoff's theory places the atmosphere of vapors, which

produces by absorption the dark lines of the solar spectrum.

{700}

This atmosphere, when shining by its own light, should, according

to the same theory, give a reversed solar spectrum, that is to

say, one composed entirely of bright lines. This is what we were

expecting and trying to verify, and it was to make the proof

decisive that I had used so many precautions. But we have just

seen that only the protuberances gave positive or bright-line

spectra. Now, it is very certain that, if an atmosphere formed of

the vapors of all the substances which have been found in the sun

really existed above the photosphere, it would have given a

spectrum at least as brilliant as that of the protuberances,

which were formed of a gas much less dense and less luminous. It

must, then, be admitted that, if this atmosphere exists, its

height is so small that it has escaped notice.

I must also add that this result did not much surprise me; for my

investigations on the solar spectrum had led me to doubt the

reality of any considerable atmosphere around the sun, and I am

more and more inclined to think that the phenomena of elective

absorption, ascribed by the great physicist of Heidelberg to an

atmosphere exterior to the sun, are clue to the vapors of the

photosphere itself, in which the solid and liquid particles

forming the luminous clouds are floating. This view is not merely

in harmony with the beautiful theory on the constitution of the

photosphere which we owe to M. Faye, but even seems to be a

necessary deduction from it.

In fine, the eclipse of the 18th of August appears to me to show

that the formation of the solar spectrum cannot be explained by

the theory heretofore admitted, and I propose a correction to

this theory as above indicated.

To return to the protuberances. During the total obscuration, I

was much impressed by the extreme brilliancy of their spectral

lines. The idea immediately occurred to me that they might be

seen even when the sun was unobscured; unfortunately the weather,

which became cloudy after the eclipse, did not allow me to try

the experiment on that day. During the night, the method and the

means presented themselves clearly to my mind. Rising the next

morning at three, I prepared for these new observations. The sun

rose quite clear; as soon as it had risen from the haze of the

horizon, I began to examine it, placing the slit of the

spectroscope, by means of the finder, upon the same place where,

the day before, I had seen the protuberances.

The slit, being placed partly on the solar disc and partly

outside, gave, of course, two spectra, that of the sun and that

of the protuberances. The brilliancy of the solar spectrum was a

great difficulty; I partially avoided it by hiding the yellow,

the green, and the blue portions, which were the most brilliant.

All my attention was directed to the line C, dark for the sun,

bright for the protuberance, and which, coming at a rather faint

part of the spectrum, was seen with comparative ease.

I had not examined the right hand or western part of the

protuberant region long when I suddenly noticed a small bright

red line, forming an exact prolongation of the dark line G of the

sun. Moving the slit so as to sweep methodically the region which

I was exploring, this line remained, but changed its length and

its brilliancy in the different parts, showing a great inequality

in the height and brightness of the various parts of the

protuberance.

{701}

This examination was resumed at three different times, and the

bright line always appeared in the same circumstances. M. Redier,

who assisted me with much interest in these experiments, saw it

as well as I, and soon we could even predict its appearance by

merely knowing what region we were examining. Soon after, I

ascertained that the line F showed itself simultaneously with G.

In the afternoon, I returned to the region examined in the

morning; the bright lines again showed themselves, but they

indicated great changes in the distribution of the protuberant

matter; the lines broke up sometimes into isolated fragments

which would not unite with the principal one, notwithstanding the

shifting of the slit. This suggested the existence of scattered

clouds formed during the forenoon. In the region of the great (or

left hand) protuberance, I found some bright lines, but their

length and arrangement showed that great changes had also

occurred here.

These first observations already showed that the coincidence of

the lines G and F was real, and that hydrogen was certainly the

most important element in these circumsolar masses. They also

established the rapidity of the changes which these bodies

undergo, which cannot be perceived during the short duration of

an eclipse.

The following days, I availed myself of all the opportunities

allowed by the weather to apply and perfect the new method, at

least as far as was permitted by the character of the

instruments, which had not been constructed to suit this new

idea.

Observing very attentively the lines of the protuberances, I have

sometimes noticed that they penetrated into the dark lines of the

solar spectrum, showing thus that the protuberance extends over

part of the sun's disc. This result was naturally to be expected;

but the interposition of the moon has always made its proof

impossible during eclipses.

I will also detail here an observation made on the 4th of

September at a favorable time, which shows how rapidly the

protuberances change their form and position.

At 9h. 50m., the examination of the sun showed a mass of

protuberant matter in the lower part of the disc. To determine

its shape, I used a method which may be called chronometric,

since time is employed in it as the standard of measure.

In this method, the telescope is placed in a fixed position, so

chosen that by the diurnal movement of the sun all parts of the

region to be explored shall come in turn into the field of the

spectroscope; and at determinate times the length and situation

of the spectral lines successively produced are noted.

The time occupied by the sun's disc in passing before the slit

gives the value of a second of time in minutes of arc. This,

combined with the length of the lines estimated in the same unit,

gives the means for a graphic representation of the protuberance.

The application of this method to the study of the solar region

just mentioned as seen on this occasion, showed a protuberance

extending over about thirty degrees (or one twelfth) of the sun's

circumference, ten of which were east of the vertical diameter,

and twenty west. Near the extremity of the western part, a cloud

was lying, distant one and a half minutes, or one twentieth of

the sun's diameter, from its limb. This cloud, about two minutes

long and one high, was parallel to the limb.

{702}

One hour afterward, a new drawing showed that the cloud had risen

rapidly, and taken a globular form. But its movements soon became

still quicker; for ten minutes later, at eleven o'clock, the

globe was enormously extended in a direction perpendicular to the

limb and to its previous position. A little mass of matter was

also detached from the lower part, and hung between the sun and

the main body of the cloud. Thick weather coming on prevented

further observations.

To resume our remarks. Considered in regard to its principle, the

new method is based upon the difference of the spectral

properties of the protuberances and of the photosphere. The light

of the latter emanates from solid or liquid particles, which are

incandescent, and is incomparably brighter than that of the

former; so that these have hardly been visible hitherto, except

during eclipses. But the case is quite altered when we use the

spectra of these bodies. For the solar light is spread over the

whole extent of its spectrum, and thus much weakened; while that

of the protuberances, on the contrary, is condensed into a few

lines whose intensity bears some proportion to that of the

corresponding solar ones. Hence their lines are quite easily seen

in the field, together with those of the sun, though their

ordinary images are entirely effaced by the dazzling light of the

photosphere.

Another very fortunate circumstance for the new method comes to

the support of the one just mentioned, namely, that the bright

lines of the protuberances answer to the dark ones of the solar

spectrum. Hence they are not only more easily seen in their own

proper field, outside and on the edge of the solar spectrum, but

they can even be followed into the interior of the latter, and by

this means the protuberances can be traced upon the globe of the

sun itself.

As regards the determination of chemical composition, the methods

followed during total eclipses always carried with them some

uncertainty; since, in the absence of the sun's light, graduated

scales had to be employed to fix the position of the lines. The

new method enables us to compare the two spectra directly.

As to the results obtained during the brief period in which this

method has been used, they are as follows:

1st. That the luminous protuberances observed during total

eclipses belong unquestionably to the circumsolar regions.

2d. That these bodies are mainly or entirely composed of

incandescent hydrogen gas.

3d. That they are subject to movements of which no terrestrial

phenomenon can give us any idea; since, though they are masses of

matter having several hundred times the volume of the earth, they

change completely their form and position in the course of a few

minutes.

Such are the principal facts arrived at. I hope, notwithstanding

the state of my eyes--fatigued by protracted experiments upon the

subject of light--that I shall be able to continue my labors, and

have the honor of submitting the results to the Bureau.

In conclusion, I will add, that I have also had an opportunity to

continue my researches on the spectrum of the vapor of water. The

climate of India, which is very moist at present, is quite

favorable to these investigations. I am inclined to attribute to

this spectrum a continually increasing importance. The whole

series of my observations here and at Paris has made me confident

of an elective action upon all the solar rays as far as the

extreme violet, though in the latter such an action is much more

difficult to establish with certainty. These experiments will

form the subject of a separate communication.

----------

{703}

Who Shall Take Care Of The Poor?

First Article.

The duty of caring for the poor, which Christ laid upon his

church, has been assumed in modern times by the civil power; and

governments have sought, by legislative enactments and political

machinery, to fill the place of those ecclesiastical charities

which disappeared in the convulsions of the sixteenth century. It

is needless to say that their attempts have failed, and that the

problem, "Who shall take care of the poor?" is still, in all

Protestant countries, practically unsolved. We feel, therefore,

that no apology is necessary for entering upon its discussion

here, and that any light which may be thrown upon the subject by

ourselves or others will tend to elucidate one of the most

perplexed and difficult social questions of the present age.

There are certain fundamental principles which any examination of

this subject, from a Christian point of view, must assume, and in

accordance with which all Christian theories and practice

concerning it must proceed.

These principles may be thus briefly stated:

I. That the care of the poor devolves upon those who continue the

mission of Christ in the redemption of mankind and accept and

obey his command, "Feed my flock;" upon those whose discipline of

character, at once personal and corporate, enables them to help

the helpless, to reform the vicious, and to conciliate the

dangerous, while their organization affords a guarantee of

persistence in these good works and of the proper use of the

means confided to them; in a word, upon those who combine the

attributes of a providence at once universal and discerning, with

equity in administration and energy in execution.

II. That the principle of action, by which this work alone can be

effected, is what may be termed "absorbent substitution," that

is, the voluntary assumption of poverty out of practical sympathy

with the poor.

III. That the legitimate effect of this action is to encourage,

aid, and guide the poor to help themselves, and to infuse into

them that love for their neighbor which, by this mediation,

becomes reciprocal.

IV. That the established means by which this work must be

performed are, first: The church in her collective capacity;

second, the orders of charity; third, the variously constituted

beneficial societies; fourth, the hand of private Christian

charity, the latter of which, in the discussion of this question

as a public one, does not, however, enter into our consideration.

{704}

The three first mentioned are often found united in the same

community: the church, represented by the congregation,

containing Sisters of Charity or Mercy, and also assistant orders

of pious persons, who, though bound by no vows, work in the world

and aid the other orders with their purse and influence. Still,

those who take the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and

who, in organized communities, devote themselves to works of

charity, must be regarded as the most perfect organs of this

Christian work. And these become thus voluntarily poor,

self-denying, and exclusive, because not only is the healthy soul

fortified and preserved in spiritual power by privation of the

pleasures of the senses, but poverty itself becomes ennobled by

the assumption, and its degradation disappears.

Treating these principles, for the present, as self-evident, we

now inquire:

Who are _our_ poor, and how shall they be cared for?

Upon this question, the Catholic Church cannot limit her

providential mission or assume a sectarian attitude. While

preaching, by example, to the pious and humane of every creed,

the zeal of active charity, she must extend her benefits to all

those who need and seek her, without favor or distinction. This

she must do to be consistent with her own historic record, and to

fulfil the behest of her Lord.

Wherever Christian faith and love exist, "by their works ye shall

know them." Charity is the test of the Catholic faith. Our Douay

Catechism says that "the first fruit of the Holy Ghost is

charity." Then it tells us what charity means, in the language of

its effects, namely, "To feed the hungry, to give drink to the

thirsty, to clothe the naked, to visit and ransom captives, to

harbor the harborless, to visit the sick, to bury the dead:" a

very matter of fact definition, but which implies that,

"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

The practice of charity alone can reconcile mankind by

dissipating schism, and by thus re-establishing their unison,

secure the triumph of the Christian church over the world.

This universal unity of spirit employs in its methods of action

many distinct organs and corresponding varieties of function, and

the time-honored maxim, _Una fides, una domus_, "One faith,

one house," and the obedience to constituted authority, bind in

the circle of good-will those orders which, though each adopts a

particular rule and special use, amicably co-operate in their

separation, like the branches of the same vine.

Whatever principles of action experience has sanctioned in

Catholic charities, commend themselves alike to all Christians.

"Why is it," asks Mrs. Jameson, "that we see so many women,

carefully educated, going over to the Catholic Church? For no

other reason than for the power it gives them to throw their

energies into a sphere of definite utility, under the control of

a high religious responsibility."

To each of the notable aspects of human affliction corresponds,

in the history of Christendom, one or more orders consecrated to

its relief, and, far from being confined to mere palliative

expedients, organic efforts toward the radical cure of our social

evils have been developed under the influence of the Catholic

Church.

Distinctive characters of the Catholic orders, though not

confined to them, are celibacy and community of property. A bond

of union purely spiritual dissolves and replaces those ties which

develop the personality of the individual.

{705}

No fair comparison can be instituted between Catholic and

Protestant orders of charity, for the simple reason that marriage

and the family, which perpetuate secular estates by entail or

inheritance, or seek, in the exchange of love, an earthly heaven,

act as effectual dissolvents on religious orders consecrated to a

special work. The vitality of the Episcopalian charities, St.

John's and St. Luke's, is now undergoing this experiment, to-wit:

Can the requisite number of efficient nurses and officers be

maintained without binding vows? Can the service of the order be

organized with influences that shall counterpoise the temptations

of worldly vanities and interests, the powerful attraction of the

sexes, and the honorable ambition of becoming one's self a focus

of social radiation?

Of course, it is not necessary to the effectiveness of a given

service that it should always be rendered by the same

individuals; but numbers avail not without discipline; and, while

relays and successions are allowed, they must not be too

frequent. The sacrifice of personal liberty, to a certain extent,

is indispensable to the order and efficiency of co-operative

charity. Hence it is not surprising that the first attempts in

England to constitute Episcopalian orders of charity should

generally have failed. This impulse was due to the humiliating

lesson of the Crimean war, when Sisters of Charity and Mercy

flocked from all Europe to the assistance of the French sick and

wounded, when similar orders of the Greek Church came to befriend

the afflicted Russian soldiers; but the English were perishing

miserably, until their unlooked-for succor by the intervention of

Miss Florence Nightingale and her heroic band.

The necessity thus apprehended, to fall back on the institutions

of Catholicity, has recently occasioned the formation of orders,

who take the vow of chastity, poverty, and obedience. Sisters of

Mercy and Sisters of the _Contemplative Life_ may be seen in

London, repairing to chapel through deserted streets in the early

morning hours. Will such vows, unsanctioned by the public opinion

of Protestant countries, be really binding? How has it proved at

Valle Cruce?

Oppressed and alarmed by the increase of pauperism, and the worse

than inefficiency of her poor-rates and secular measures of

pauper-relief, England now feels that she has committed something

near akin to suicide in the destruction of her religious orders.

No longer "merry and wise," her political economists are

splitting hairs to find just what pittance may suffice to keep

the poor from dying of hunger without making them more

comfortable than others whose pride refuses alms, so as not to

set a premium on idleness.

"The notion popularized by Cobbett," says Herbert Spencer,

arguing the question, "that every one has a right to a

maintenance out of the soil, leaves those who adopt it in an

awkward predicament. Do but ask them to specify, and they are set

fast. Assent to their principle; tell them you will assume their

title to be valid; and then, as a needful preliminary to the

liquidation of their claim, ask for some precise definition of

it; inquire what is a maintenance. They are dumb! Is it, say you,

potatoes and salt, with rags and a mud cabin? or is it bread and

bacon, in a two-roomed cottage? Will a joint on Sundays suffice?

or does the demand include meat and malt-liquor daily?

{706}

Will tea, coffee, and tobacco be expected? and if so, how many

ounces of each? Are bare walls and brick floors all that is

needed? or must there be carpets and paper-hanging? Are shoes

considered essential? or will the Scotch practice be approved?

Shall the clothing be of fustian? If not, of what quality must

the broadcloth be? In short, just point out where, between the

two extremes of starvation and luxury, this something called a

maintenance lies. How else shall we know whether enough has been

awarded, or whether too much? One thinks that a bare subsistence

is all that can fairly be demanded. Another hints at something

beyond. A third maintains that a few of the enjoyments of life

should be provided for. And some of the more consistent, pushing

the doctrine to its legitimate result, will rest satisfied with

nothing short of community of property."

What this argument renders most apparent is, the necessity for an

umpire, or mediatorial power, between collective society and the

individual or family requiring aid, a power sympathetic alike

with those who have more, and with those who have less, than

necessity demands, and whose social position shall derive, from a

source superior to either, a _prestige_ which will inspire

confidence in its discretion and give a certain authority to its

decisions. If personal beneficence or corporate guarantees

suffice for the relief of sufferers, or to obtain for those able

and willing the opportunity of suitable employment, the

mediatorial power will not interfere. If, on the other hand,

appeal be made to it, it may act either by the exercise of its

own faculties, or as the trustee of social goods; a mutual

intelligence bureau of higher grade than our ordinary business

offices. Such a function the Catholic Church and its orders of

charity fulfilled in England, and may yet fulfil in America.

Mr. John Stuart Mill well observes, that the state cannot

undertake to discriminate between the deserving and the

undeserving indigent. It owes no more than subsistence to the

first, and can give no less to the last. Since it must provide

subsistence for the criminal poor while undergoing punishment,

not to do the same for the poor--who have not offended is to give

a premium to crime. Guardians and overseers are not fit to be

trusted to give or withhold other people's money according to

their verdict on the morality of the person soliciting it, and it

would show much ignorance of the ways of mankind to suppose that

such persons, even in the almost impossible case of their being

qualified, will take the trouble of ascertaining and sifting the

past conduct of a person in distress, so as to form a rational

judgment on it. Private charity can make these distinctions, and,

in bestowing its own money, is entitled to do so according to its

own judgment.

It is admitted to be right that human beings should help one

another; and the more so in proportion to the urgency of the

need. In all cases of helping, we distinguish the consequences of

the assistance itself, and the consequences of relying on the

assistance. The former are generally beneficial, but the latter

for the most part injurious; so much so, in many cases, as

greatly to outweigh the value of the benefit. There are few

things more mischievous than that people should rely on the

habitual aid of others for the means of subsistence, and

unhappily there is no lesson which they more easily learn. The

problem to be solved is, how to give the greatest amount of

needful help with the smallest encouragement to undue reliance on

it.

{707}

Energy and self-dependence are, however, liable to be impaired by

the absence of help as well as by its excess. It is even more

fatal to exertion to have no hope of succeeding by it than to be

assured of succeeding without it. When the condition of any one

is so disastrous that his energies are paralyzed by

discouragement, assistance is a tonic, not a sedative. It braces

instead of deadening the active faculties, always provided that

the assistance is not such as to dispense with self-help by

substituting itself for the person's own labor, skill, and

prudence, but is limited to affording him a better hope of

attaining success by those legitimate means. This accordingly is

a test to which all plans of philanthropy should be brought,

whether intended for the benefit of individuals or of classes,

and whether conducted on the voluntary or the government

principle.

Overlooking the spiritual forces which religious charity brings

to bear in elevating the moral tone of character, Mr. Mill finds

the foregoing principles well applied by the English Poor-Law of

1834, because, while it prevents any person, except by his own

choice, from dying of hunger, it leaves their condition as much

as possible below that of the poorest who find support for

themselves. Mr. Mill's logic here seems to arrive at the

_reductio ad absurdum_; for the state of these poorest of

the working poor, whom pride forbids to claim pauper relief, is

too distressing for charity, acting only below that level, to be

of any avail. Usually inclined to the most liberal and humane

views, Mr. Mill has here given way to a Protestant prejudice,

which regards as ill-advised the more whole-souled Catholic style

of charity. The following extract from De Vere's work shows the

contrast, and affords a good answer to this overcautiousness

about doing too much. All depends upon the spirit in which

charity is bestowed; it should be cordial, not humiliating and

distressing:

"Most of the Sisters are from the class of servants and

needle-women; but there are many who, having been brought up to

enjoy all the comforts and even elegances of life, have

willingly renounced all to make themselves the humblest

servants of the poor, to wash, and cook, and _beg_ for

those who have been beggars all their lives. The secret of all

this lies in this, that the Sisters see, in their poor, Jesus

Christ himself, to wait on whom must be their highest glory.

From this, then, springs the most delightful interchange of

feeling between the Sisters and their pensioners; for these

poor people reverence with the liveliest gratitude those who

seem to them as the angels of God sent to redeem them from all

their misery and wretchedness, to comfort their bodies, and

enlighten their souls. The change wrought in the old people

after they have been with the Sisters a little while, is said

to be most remarkable. From being fractious, complaining, and

idle, they grow cheerful and contented in the highest degree,

and every one is anxious to do something to contribute to the

common stock. '_Our_ houses, _our_ Sisters,' they

say--a type of the perfect union which reigns amongst them.

Everything is done by the Sisters to cultivate a spirit of

cheerfulness; they are treated as children, and every

opportunity is embraced of making them a little festival. The

beautiful simplicity of childhood seems to return in all its

fulness to these poor creatures, whose lives have been spent in

vice and misery. From a state approaching to brutality, they

revive even to gayety. Well may they say as they do, 'We never

were happy until we came here.' On great occasions they sing

and dance, and the Sisters join with them. When the anniversary

of the house of Rouen was lately celebrated, the old woman who

had been the first pensioner was crowned as the queen of the

day, and her lowly seat decked with flowers, whilst her aged

companions cheered her with the heartiest good will.

{708}

"The tender regard with which the Sisters cherish the poor on

whom they wait, calls forth the best feelings of their hearts,

so long dead to every human charity. They respond by the most

refreshing cordiality; but truly hearts could not resist the

winning kindness with which they are invariably treated. One

little incident may illustrate how above all selfish

considerations the law of kindness prevails: One old woman was

anxious to be received among the 'Little Sisters' somewhere in

France. Her case well deserved the privilege, but the old woman

insisted on bringing also into the house her hen and her

sparrow. Without these companions, she would not enter; she

would rather forego the advantage offered to her. The old

woman, her hen, and her sparrow were all admitted together,

anything rather than lose an opportunity of doing good.

"Selfishness cannot long exist where such examples of

self-denial are ever present in these Sisters. They take the

worst of everything for themselves. Even in the longest

established houses there are no chairs except for the old

people; the Sisters 'sit upon their heels.' A Jesuit father, on

one day visiting one of the houses, found the Sisters just

sitting down to dinner. They had nothing to drink out of but

odd and broken vessels, mustard-pots, jam-pots, etc.; all in

such a dilapidated condition that the good father hastened off

the very first penitent, who came to him for confession, with

an injunction to buy a dozen of glasses and send them to the

house of his '_Petites Sceurs_.' Such is their voluntary

poverty!

"Every time a house is opened, so soon as a sufficient number

of poor are collected, a retreat is preached. The fruits of

these retreats, in those who have been so long absent from the

sacraments, is wonderful. Thus the house is furnished with

those who serve to set a good example to all those who are

afterward admitted.

"Nothing can exceed the gratitude of these poor creatures when

reconciled with God. They embrace the Sisters with tears. 'It

is seventy-five years since I drew near to God,' said one; 'and

now I am going to receive him to-morrow.' A poor barber who had

lost the use of his hands through rheumatism, and, being unable

to exercise his profession, had fallen into such a state of

destitution that he was thankful to accept an asylum in one of

the houses of the 'Little Sisters,' was observed, after his

confession, to be looking at his hands. 'What are you doing?'

was asked of him. 'I am looking at the finger of God,' he

replied. This spirit of resignation and gratitude is nearly

universal, and the Sisters are not without their consolation

even in this world."

To the special ministry of the Sisterhoods of Charity have been

assigned the sick, infirm, and aged poor, whom all regard as

proper objects of relief and pious care. We have shown, in our

October number, how well they satisfied alike the Christian and

the economic need. Mrs. Jameson, in the work there referred to,

[Footnote 273] has strongly contrasted the conditions of the

"English workhouse system" (which is the same as ours) with the

religious management not only of the sick-poor, but also of the

criminal and most degraded classes. Take, for instance, the

Austrian prison at Neudorf. This prison is an experiment which as

yet had only had a three years' trial when Mrs. Jameson visited

it, but had already succeeded so well, both morally and

economically, that the Austrian government was preparing to

organize eleven others on the same plan. It began by the efforts

of two humane ladies to find a refuge for those wretched

creatures of their own sex who, after undergoing their term of

punishment, were cast out of the prisons. They obtained the aid

of two Sisters of a religious order in France, devoted to the

reformation of lost and depraved women. Government soon enlarged

their sphere of action, and confided to them the administration

of a prison, penitentiary, and hospital, with several buildings

and a large garden.

[Footnote 273: _Sisters of Charity, Catholic and Protestant_.]

"In its management, I found more than two hundred criminals,

separated into three classes. The first class consisted of

desperate characters, the refuse of the prisons at Vienna, who

are brought under a strong armed guard, bound hand and foot.

Their appearance was either stupid, gross, and vacant or

frightful from the predominance of evil propensities. The

second class, drafted from the first, were called the

penitents, and showed, in the expression of their countenances,

an extraordinary change from the newly arrived. They were

allowed to assist in the house, to cook and to wash, and to

work in the garden, which last was a great boon. There were

more than fifty of these, and they were, at least, humanized.

The third class were the voluntaries who, when their term had

expired, preferred remaining in the house and were allowed to

do so. Part of the profit of their work was retained for their

benefit.

{709}

"Twelve women, aided by three chaplains, a surgeon, and a

physician, none of whom resided in the establishment, managed

the whole. They had dismissed the soldiers and police-officers,

finding that they needed no other means of constraint than

their dignity, good sense, patience, and tenderness. There was

as much of frightful physical disease as there was of moral

disease, crime, and misery. Two Sisters acted as chief nurses

and apothecaries. The ventilation and cleanliness were perfect.

When I expressed my astonishment that so small a number of

women could manage such a set of wild and wicked creatures, the

answer was, 'If we want assistance, we shall have it; but it is

as easy with our system to manage three hundred as one hundred

or as fifty. The power is not in ourselves, it is granted from

above.' Here men and women were acting together; and in all the

regulations, religious and sanitary, there was mutual aid,

mutual respect, and interchange of experience; but the Sisters

were subordinate only to the chief civil and ecclesiastical

authorities; the internal administration rested with them."

The "Little Sisters of the Poor" have inspired the following

remarks, which apply to many other orders actively engaged in

works of charity:

"Their records demonstrate that religious institutions do,

effectually and cheaply, what the clumsy and lifeless machinery

of the state does at an enormous cost and peril, with a very

questionable preponderance of gain over loss. Charity is a

religious work, and these orders are specially qualified, as

religious, to lead the charity of the country; they have a

special vocation and a supernatural aim; they unite the

strongest motives for individual exertion with the highest

development of the co-operative system; they are free from the

impediments of other parties; what they give establishes no

legal or political right, yet it recognizes a moral claim and

provides for a human want. In addressing the statesmen of this

country, we can prove that one thousand dollars a year, thus

wisely spent in well-organized charity, goes twice as far as

two thousand dollars a year spent with a blundering alternation

of prodigality and cruelty, such as characterizes the

management of our secular charities. Organic bodies contain

within themselves a principle of endless adaptation. The

church, herself an organic body, is the fruitful mother of all

such organizations as the moral needs of man require; nor is

there any reason to doubt that she can help the modern pauper

as readily as the captives, the lepers, and the laborers in

mines for whom her mediaeval orders worked. The recent

institution of the 'Little Sisters of the Poor' derives a

peculiar interest from the mode in which it approaches that

special trial of modern society, pauperism, and it may, with

the divine blessing, advance from its present humble beginning

to enterprises which, alike on the ground of theology and of

sound political economy, are beyond the efforts of the most

beneficent governments now existing."

The gospels abundantly attest the loving and tender behavior of

Christ toward the poor and the afflicted of every class. It is

important to note how lively and loyal is the tradition of this

conduct in the Christian church, from its earliest periods to our

own day. It was a favorite turn in the mediaeval legends of

charity that our Lord should reveal himself, even in the body, to

those who had, for his love, consoled some poor object of

compassion. It is written of St. Elizabeth, Queen of Hungary,

that she kept always near her, and herself served, thirteen sick

poor, in memory of Christ and the twelve apostles.

"Among the sick was a poor little leper named Helias, whose

condition was so deplorable that no one would take charge of

him. Elizabeth, seeing him thus abandoned by all, felt herself

bound to do more for him than for any other; she took and

bathed him herself, anointed him with a healing balm, and then

laid him in the bed, even that which she shared with her royal

husband. Now it happened that the duke returned to the castle

whilst Elizabeth was thus occupied. His mother ran out

immediately to meet him, and when he alighted she said, 'Come

with me, dear son, and I will show thee a pretty doing of thy

Elizabeth.' 'What does this mean?' said the duke. 'Only come,'

said she, 'and thou wilt see one she loves much better than

thee.' Then, taking him by the hand, she led him to his chamber

and to his bed, and said to him, Now look, dear son, thy wife

puts lepers in thy bed without my being able to prevent her.

{710}

She wishes to give thee leprosy, thou seest it thyself.' On

hearing these words, the duke could not repress a certain

degree of irritation, and he quickly raised the covering of

his bed; but, at the same moment, the Most High unsealed the

eyes of his soul, and, in place of the leper, he saw the

figure of Jesus Christ crucified extended on his bed. At this

sight he remained motionless, as did his mother, and began to

shed abundant tears without being able at first to utter a

word. Then, turning round, he saw his wife, who had gently

followed in order to calm his wrath against the leper.

'Elizabeth,' said he, 'my dear, good sister, I pray thee often

to give my bed to such guests. I shall always thank thee for

this, and be thou not hindered by any one in the exercise of

thy virtue.' Then he knelt and prayed thus to God, 'Lord, have

mercy upon me a poor sinner. I am not worthy to see all these

wonders.'" [Footnote 274]

[Footnote 274: Montalembert, _Life of St. Elizabeth_.]

For the many illustrations of the wonderful diffusion of

benevolence in the early ages of the Christian church, in

contrast with the truculent spirit of the contemporaneous

paganism, see Rev. Dr. Manahan's _Triumph of the Catholic

Church_, etc.

We recall here the mention of John, Patriarch of Alexandria, who

asked of his clergy a register of all the poor and destitute in

that city. "Go," said he, "and get me a full list of my masters."

From the Theodosian code, it appears that the church owned large

vessels, employed either in bringing to some dioceses provisions

for their own flocks, or in sending help to the most afflicted

communities, from Egypt even unto Gaul.

"The Cenobites, or Monks of the Desert," says St. Augustine,

"used to freight these ships of charity with grain, obtained by

them in exchange for the mats and baskets which they

manufactured." The vast hospital, founded by St. Basil, of

Cappadocia, near Caesarea, is called by St. Gregory" a new city

built for the sick and poor."

Hospitals were so great an innovation on the customs of the

ancient classic world, that the Emperor Julian, surnamed "The

Apostate," tried in vain to introduce them. Repelling the

Christian doctrine, he was sensible of the influence of Christian

charity, and would fain have engrafted on the pagan stock this

fruit of another dispensation.

Why are the poor and afflicted especially given in charge to the

church, and why does the Christian see them with quite other eyes

than those of mere benevolence? Why is Christ identified, in his

birth and companionship, with the poor? Why are the most

suffering classes the first objects of his care and mediation?

If it is written that "He who shall give to one of my disciples

only so much as a cup of cold water in my name, shall not lose

his reward," it is also written that the hungry, the thirsty, the

stranger, the naked, the sick, the prisoner, are all our brethren

in Christ. It is by virtue of that susceptibility, which the

exercise of charity develops in us, that we become consciously

"members one of another in the body of Christ."

Jesus Christ came to awaken in humanity a conscience including

our neighbor, a conservative instinct embracing the relations of

the individual with the species, unlimited by family, clan, or

nation; and which transcends the analysis of a Malthus, a Locke,

or a La Rochefoucauld. [Footnote 275]

[Footnote 275: That Sister of the Poor, whom you pass in the

street with her basket, and perhaps look down upon as on a

creature of inferior grade, is living closer to the heart of

universal love, is deeper in celestial wisdom than the proud

philosopher; leads a life more heroic in its abnegation and

humility than the general with his bloody laurels. This is

so, because the divine influx of life moulds the will and the

affections, and moves the bowels of compassion long before

the brain matures its schemes of action.]

{711}

The suffering persons or classes are the atoms, the organs, or

the local points where the life of humanity is threatened or

compromised; thither, with unwonted energy, must its vital

resources be directed; and how directed? Here we find the

contrast between the spirit of Christ and that of pagan or

schismatic countries. Ignoring the true unity of man, paganism

merely suppressed the effects of misery by suppressing the person

of the miserable. It did not consider that the spirit of cruelty,

developed or encouraged in this elimination, is itself a living

cause and propagator of human misery. Religious sympathy alone

could quicken the intelligence to this perception, and find

something precious in the life of the wretch rescued from his

wretchedness; find beneath the rags, the dirt, and the chains,

beneath ignorance, the vices, and diseases, that "a man's a man

for a' that." Again, Christianity discerned precious discipline

of virtue in the exercise of charity, and practised it no less

for the sake of the giver than that of the receiver. This is a

practical commentary on the axiom of human unity or solidarity,

anticipating the fuller light which may be expected from a

knowledge of our ulterior destinies.

Wherever the church has nobly filled her part as the social

conscience of Christendom, (a function for which the confessional

so well adapts her,) she has been the intelligent mediator

between those who need to give or to serve, and those who are

really in need; she has maintained a social equilibrium while

averting the jealousies and hatreds of classes, and by her

enlightened and judicious distribution has prevented charity from

ministering to vices and imposture.

"The _poor_ ye shall have always with you." The worst

prejudices only will interpret this saying of our Lord so as to

discourage our efforts to eliminate, from the condition of the

poor, its actual vices, disgraces, and miseries. This once

effected by means, the success of which experience has verified,

there remains an honorable poverty due to the disinterested

devotions of science, art, and social affections, in which the

love of our neighbor, under divers forms, absorbs cupidity and

the cares of self-preservation. The church has always encouraged

vows of voluntary poverty, and directed the zeal which animated

them to Christian uses. She has permitted the rich to expiate

their crimes by sharing their fortunes with the poor, even by

soliciting alms for them; and we are told that Roman nobles have

been seen, during this very year, thus begging in the streets of

Rome. To a noble poverty belong the first years, and often the

whole life, of the inventor, of the true artist, of all whose

originality of conception or fidelity to the ideal transcends

prudential economy. We may glance but in passing at that

"Bohemia," where floating wrecks mingle in disorder with germinal

forces of the social future. In proportion as the constitution of

societies shall be perfected in kind and useful labors, those in

whose characters friendship predominates, whether attached to

holy orders like the Trappists and Sisters of Charity, or simply

members of the church of Christ, will content themselves with the

common _minimum_, and work in their elected spheres without

care for any other material compensation. To such has Christ

said: "Take no care what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, or

wherewithal ye shall be clothed," etc. "Consider the lilies,"

etc. We shall not confound these noble poor with paupers, a term

which comprehends indifferently the victims of misfortune, of

vice, and of disease; deficient in faculties either corporeal or

mental, or in consistency of purpose, principle, and will.

{712}

_Pauperism_ is not to be regarded as a state of suffering to

which the Christian should be resigned; far from being an

expiation of sin, it is not only humiliation, but degradation and

perversion, and owes its parasite existence to the absence or

decline of Christian life.

The Catholic Church commenced an exterminating war on pauperism

in those fraternal associations which sprang from the breath of

the Saviour, and which its religious orders have never

intermitted. Disbanded by the persecutions of the Roman empire,

they rallied to works of charity; and, gradually obtaining

spiritual ascendency over Europe, organized agriculture and the

arts of peace. In the sixth century, the Benedictines and

Columbans reclaimed the soils of Europe from their wilderness,

and their peoples from the worst of barbarism.

The monasteries and convents, considered from the point of view

of political and social economy, were agricultural, scientific,

and domestic associations, with fields, gardens, and orchards,

libraries, laboratories, and workshops, provided with all the

means and facilities known in their age and country for the

subjection of nature's resources to the progressive evolution of

humanity. Fusing the nobles and the people, absorbing, in the

sentiment of our common fatherhood in God and brotherhood in

Christ, the invidious distinctions of caste, reconciling again in

their administration the behests of spiritual culture with the

exigencies of material existence and refinement of taste in

letters and the arts, the monastic orders were for Christendom a

most benign providence. Their charities never have been limited

to the necessities of mere subsistence, like the secular dolings

out of _so-called_ modern charity. Hearts must respond to

the needs of hearts, and brains to those of brains; in other

words, the organization of Christian charity essentially embraces

social life and education, intellectual and moral culture, as

well as the conditions of labor, of remuneration, of lodging, of

clothing, and nourishment, comprised in the guarantee of access

to the soil. By separating the material from the spiritual

elements of charity, Christendom retrogrades into paganism; less

brutal, less ferocious, the economic (?) workhouse system is

colder and still more inhuman than those methods of summary

destruction by which Greece removed her supernumerary helots, or

Rome her infirm poor.

"It is not without a mingled shame and fear," says Mrs.

Jameson, of the English workhouse, "that I approach this

subject. Whatever their arrangement and condition, in one thing

I found all alike--the want of a proper moral supervision.

"The most vulgar of human beings are set to rule over the most

vulgar; the pauper is set to manage the pauper; the ignorant

govern the ignorant; every softening or elevating influence is

absent or of rare occurrence, and every hardening and depraving

influence continuous or ever at hand. Never did I visit any

dungeon, any abode of crime or misery, in any country, which

left me the same crushing sense of sorrow, indignation, and

compassion--almost despair--as some of our English workhouses.

Never did I see more clearly what must be the inevitable

consequences where the feminine and religious influences are

ignored; where what we call charity is worked by a stern, hard

machinery; where what we mean for good is not bestowed but

inflicted on others in a spirit not pitiful, nor merciful, but

reluctant and adverse, if not cruel. Perhaps those who hear me

may not all be aware of the origin of our parish workhouses.

They were not designed as penitentiaries, although they have

really become such. They were intended to be religious and

charitable institutions, to supply the place of those

conventual hospitals and charities which, with their revenues,

were suppressed by Henry VIII.

{713}

"The epithet 'charitable' could never be applied to any parish

workhouse I have seen. Our machine-charity is as much charity,

in the Christian sense, as the praying-machines of the Tartars

are piety.

"These institutions are supported by a variable tax, paid so

reluctantly, with so little sympathy in its purpose, that the

wretched paupers seem to be regarded as a sort of parish

locusts, sent to devour the substance of the rate-payers; as

the natural enemies of those who are taxed for their

subsistence, almost as criminals; and I have no hesitation in

saying that the convicts in some of our jails have more

charitable and more respectful treatment than the poor in our

workhouses. Hence, a notion prevails among the working-classes

that it is better to be a criminal than a pauper--better to go

to a jail than to a workhouse.

"Between the poor and their so-called guardians, the bond is

anything but charity.

"A gentleman who had served the office said to me: 'I am really

unfit to be a poor-law guardian; I have some vestige of

humanity left in me!' Under these guardians, and in immediate

contact with the poor, are a master and a matron, who keep the

accounts, distribute food and clothing, and keep order. Among

them some are respected and loved, others hated or feared; some

are kindly and intelligent, others of the lowest grade. In one

workhouse the master had been a policeman, in another the

keeper of a small public-house, in another he had served in the

same workhouse as porter. The subordinates are not of a higher

grade, except occasionally the school-master and

school-mistress, whom I have sometimes found struggling to

perform their duties, sometimes quite unfitted for them, and

sometimes resigned to routine and despair.

"In the wards for the old and the sick, the intense vulgarity,

the melancholy dulness, mingled with a strange license and

levity, are dreadful. I attribute both to the utter absence of

the religious and feminine element.

"But is there not always a chaplain? The chaplain has seemed to

me in such places rather a religious accident than a religious

element. When he visits a ward to read and pray once a week,

perhaps there is a decorum in his presence; the oaths, the

curses, the vile language cease; the vulgar strife is silenced,

to recommence the moment his back is turned. I remember one

instance in which the chaplain had requested that the poor,

profligate women might be kept out of his way. They had,

indeed, shown themselves somewhat obstreperous and irreverent.

I saw another chaplain of a great workhouse so shabby that I

should have mistaken him for one of the paupers. In doing his

duty, he would fling a surplice over his dirty, torn coat,

kneel down at the entrance of a ward, hurry over two or three

prayers, heard from the few beds nearest to him, and then off

to another ward. The salary for this minister for the sick and

poor was twenty pounds a year. This, then, is the religious

element; as if religion were not the necessary, inseparable,

ever-present, informing spirit of a Christian charitable

institution, but rather something extraneous and accidental, to

be taken in set doses at set times. This is what our workhouses

provide to awaken the faith, rouse the conscience, heal the

broken spirit, and light up the stupefied faculties of a

thousand unhappy, ignorant, debased human beings congregated

together.

"Then as to the feminine element in a great and well-ordered

workhouse, under conscientious management, (to take a favorable

specimen,) I visited sixteen wards, in each ward from fifteen

to twenty-five sick, aged, bedridden, or helpless poor. In each

ward all the assistance given and all the supervision were in

the hands of one nurse and a helper, both chosen from among the

pauper women supposed to be the least immoral and drunken. The

ages of the nurses might be from sixty-five to eighty years;

the assistants were younger.

"The number of inmates under medical treatment in the year 1854

in the London workhouses was over 50,000, (omitting one, the

Marylebone.) To these there were 70 paid nurses and 500 pauper

nurses and assistants, (not more than one fifth of the number

requisite for effective nursing, even if they were all able

nurses.)

"As the unpaid pauper nurses have some additional allowance of

tea or beer, it is not unusual for the medical attendant to

send such poor feeble old women as require some little

indulgence to be nurses in the sick wards."

Such is the standard of qualification, and as for their

assistants, Mrs. Jameson found some of them nearly blind and

others maimed of a limb. She remembers no cheerful faces; their

features and deportment were melancholy, or sullen, or bloated,

or harsh, and these are the nurses to whom the sick poor are

confided!

{714}

"In one workhouse the nurses had a penny a week and extra beer;

in another the allowance had been a shilling a month, but

recently withdrawn by the guardians from motives of economy.

The matron told me that while this allowance continued, she

could exercise some control over the nurses, she could stop

their allowance if they did not behave well; now she has no

hold on them! They all drink. Whenever it is their turn to go

out for a few hours, they come back intoxicated, and have to be

put to bed in the wards they are set over!"

Mrs. Jameson speaks of bribery as the only means by which some of

the bedridden patients could obtain help.

"Any little extra allowance of tea or sugar, left by pitying

friends, went in this way. One nurse made five shillings a week

by thus fleecing the poor inmates. Those who could not pay this

tax were neglected, and implored in vain to be turned in their

beds. The matron knows that these things exist, but has no

power to prevent them; she knows not what tyranny may be

exercised in her absence by her deputies, for the wretched

creatures dare not complain, knowing how it would be visited

upon them."

In some workhouses many who can work will not; in others the

inmates are confined to such labor as is degrading, such as is a

punishment in prisons, which excites no faculty of attention, or

hope, or sympathy, which contemplates no improvement, namely,

picking oakum, etc., and this lest there should exist some kind

of competition injurious to tradesmen.

As to the "out-door relief" at certain workhouses, Mrs. Jameson

says it was distributed to creatures penned up for hours in foul

air, who waited sullenly for the bread doled out with curses. She

complains again here of the system which brings a brutal and

vulgar power to bear on vulgarity or brutality, the bad and

defective organization to bear on one bad and defective, "so you

increase and multiply and excite, as in a hot-bed, all the

material of evil instead of neutralizing it with good, and, thus

leavened, you turn it out on society to contaminate all around."

Rev. J. S. Brewer, a workhouse chaplain, in his lectures to

ladies on practical subjects, writes of the insensible influence

which the mere presence of ladies, their voice, their common

words, their ordinary manners, their thoughts, all that they

carry unconsciously about them, can exercise on the poor; but

this applies to real ladies, cultivated, gentle, well-born,

well-bred. There are no people more alive to gentle blood and

gentle manners than the English poor. He confirms in other

respects the preceding remarks of Mrs. Jameson, and says of the

children:

"The disorderly girls and boys of our streets are mainly the

produce of the workhouse and the workhouse schools. Over them

the society has no hold, because they have been taught to feel

that they have nothing in common with their fellow-men. Their

experience is not of a home or parents, but of a workhouse and

a governor, of a prison and of a jailer."

Nature exhibits two contrasted methods for controlling that

_tendency to increase of population beyond a due proportion to

the means of subsistence_, which seems to justify in the eyes

of some political economists the partial destruction of the

species by war. One of these methods is extermination; the other,

elevation. Malthus says, in substance: I would share all my

having with the poor. I would proclaim this the duty of the rich,

were it possible, by even enforcing and continuing the most

liberal distribution of goods, while all were working faithfully

to increase the yield of the earth as fast as the mouths that

consume it would multiply; but extensive observation and

experience proves that, the easier life is made for the poor, the

faster they increase; this increase is at a ratio so much greater

than the means of subsistence are capable of reaching, that we

should soon be all paupers unless we restrain each local

population within the ratio of its provisions.

{715}

Malthus understood that high-toned character and uncommon force

of will were essential to the perfection of such restraint. He

invokes the influence of the church and of education to this

effect. One step further, however, in the filiation of ideas

would have led him to perceive a supreme harmony in the

equilibrium between population and subsistence, arising out of

the perfection of organic types and individual characters; so

that _quality is the cure of quantity_.

If it be true, as travellers affirm, that in Europe the

_temperate_ are divided from the _intemperate

populations_ by a curve which, commencing at the eastern

extremity of France, intersects Berlin and terminates at

Sevastopol, being the northern limit of the vine-growing

countries; then, _a fortiori_, will the greatest temperance

be found among peoples whose refinement not only rejects

distilled liquors but the coarser qualities of wine, and will

have either the very best or none.

This law is universal. Compare the order of mammifers, a high

type like man or the elephant, with a low type like the rabbit or

mouse. Species are more prolific with each grade in their

descent. Now compare the order of mammifers with the order of

fishes, passing through the birds and reptiles, embracing all

vertebrate animals; still the lower are more prolific, and

consequently more subject to destruction. Now compare the

vertebrate type with the insect, passing through the articulate.

Still the same increase of numerical ratio down the scale of

life; and when we reach polyps and plants, every section, every

bud, may become a complete organism, and multiplication takes

place by several methods at once--seeds, tubers, roots, suckers,

buds, etc. Follow this law in the science of breeding. Even among

fish, the fat and well-conditioned breed but slowly, and "ponds

of misery" are kept for breeding carps. The history of the

_turf_ verifies similar facts in the physiology of the

horse.

We no longer wonder that the hovels of the suffering poor should

swarm with children; but the analogies of the animal kingdom

encourage us to believe that social and industrial procedures,

which convert these children into Christians and launch them in

the path of a general prosperity, will itself tend to reduce the

ratio of their increase by a method more expedient than those of

war, pestilence, or famine.

In conclusion: If the first of these natural methods of checking

population be adapted to the world of the _fall_--a world of

selfishness and sin--the other method is adapted to the world of

the redemption--a world of Christian co-operation and love of our

neighbor. By the first method, population is reduced so

effectively that the most agreeable portions of the earth's

surface remain almost untouched by human culture. When, by the

triumph of true religion, wars and their consequences cease to

vex humanity, population may increase until it covers the area of

the habitable globe, without danger of starving itself, without

sinking into pauperism. The numerical population of the world may

increase while its actual ratio of propagation is diminished, and

is harmonized with its capacity of production. Such is the logic

of charity, which in relieving suffering aims at the spiritual

elevation of character and the permanent protection of mankind.

----------

{716}

New Publications.

History Of Louisiana: The American Domination.

By Charles Gayarré.

New York: William J. Widdleton. 1866.

This is a handsome 8vo volume of 693 pages, of which 250 are

devoted to the story of the defence of New Orleans by General

Jackson, and 60 pages to a sketch of leading public events from

1816 to 1861. The first chapter opens thus:

"On the 20th of December, 1803, the colony of Louisiana had

passed from the domination of Spain into that of the United

States of America, to which it was delivered by France after a

short possession of twenty days, as I have related in a former

work," (_History of Louisiana, Spanish Domination_.)

It is to be regretted, we think, that this relation of the

cession is not given in the volume before us. The causes, the

antecedents, the inevitable necessity of the cession, are all

practically American, and, therefore properly the subject for the

opening chapter of the "American Domination."

We have not seen Mr. Gayarré's preceding volume, but presume he

has well told the story of the cession. It is an interesting one.

Martin's _History of Louisiana_ was very meagre on that

point, and gave, if we remember correctly, little else than the

text of the treaty. True, Martin's book was completed some forty

years ago, when the author had not at hand the materials that now

exist. Barbé Marbois's work was not then published.

The "American Domination," we venture to suggest, should have

opened with at least a sketch or _résumé_ of the state of

facts immediately preceding the cession--the condition of trade

between the Upper Mississippi and New Orleans, the order of

Morales, (October, 1802) closing the river, the supposition

throughout the West that the action of Morales was authorized by

the French government, the excitement caused by it, etc. etc.

The Mississippi to be closed!

It would be difficult at this day to convey an idea of the

consternation and indignant anger of the inhabitants of the Ohio

and Mississippi valleys at the announcement. The country was in a

blaze of excitement. Meetings were held, resolutions passed, and,

what was more significant, rifles were repaired, powder

purchased, and knives sharpened.

When Germany, a few years since, sang and shouted

"Sie sollen ihn nicht haben,

den freien Deutschen Rhein,"

war may or may not have been imminent; but when the hunters of

Kentucky and the backwoodsmen of Ohio swore, as they picked their

flint-locks, "They sha'n't have the Mississippi!" the oath meant

business. In their eyes the free navigation of the Father of

Waters is a part of every Western man's heritage, [Footnote 276]

and when he clears a farm in the great valley, the right freely

to carry his produce down to the mouth of the Mississippi is to

him simply what the lawyers would call an _easement_,

passing with the title to his acres.

[Footnote 276: "No power in the world shall deprive us of

this right."--_Petition to Congress_.]

Prominent on Mr. Gayarré's pages stands out the figure of

Claiborne, Governor of Louisiana from 1804 to 1816. We rise from

the perusal of Mr. Gayarré's book with a higher estimate than

ever of this distinguished man.

Calm, prudent, wise, temperate, and magnanimous, Claiborne is one

of the most admirable characters in American history.

{717}

When a virulent libel was published against him, on which the

attorney-general thought it his duty to institute suit, Claiborne

wrote him a noble letter requesting him to stop the prosecution,

(p. 227.) "An officer whose hands and motives are pure," he said,

"has nothing to fear from newspaper detraction, or the invectives

of angry and deluded individuals. My conduct in life is the best

answer I can return to my enemies. It is before the public, and

has secured, and will, I am certain, continue to secure me the

esteem and confidence of that portion of society whose

approbation is desirable to an honest man. The lie of the day

gives me no concern. Neglected calumny soon expires; notice it,

and you gratify your calumniators; prosecute it, and it acquires

consequence; punish it, and you enlist in its favor the public

sympathy."

The story of the heroic defence of Fort Bowyer is well and

spiritedly told by Mr. Gayarré, and that of the defence of New

Orleans, in the various skirmishes and battles that for weeks

preceded the grand culminating victory of January 8th, is, for

the first time, clear and intelligible to us. Here Mr. Gayarré

gives us several pages of nervous and picturesque writing. His

description of "the night before the battle," and of the brave

but disastrous charge of the British troops upon the American

line, is excellent in spirit and in detail.

Mr. Gayarré explodes the popular story of the cotton-bale

fortifications. There were none. "Some bales of cotton had been

used to form the cheeks of the embrasures of our batteries, and

notwithstanding the popular tradition that our breastworks were

lined with it, this was the only one," etc. etc. (p. 456.)

The account of the two colored battalions which rendered such

excellent service is interesting, as also Mr. Gayarré's comments

on the celebrated British countersign of "Beauty and Booty."

Mr. Gayarré's history closes with a long paragraph, somewhat in

the same dithyrambic vein that marks the pages of his first

volume of Louisiana. He has, however, greatly improved both in

style and judicious arrangement of matter, and, combining many of

the best qualities of the historian with great aptitude of

research and study, has undoubtedly made a mark in literature,

his state may well be proud of, even though she be amenable to

the reproach conveyed by the author at page 391.

It appears that, in 1814, Governor Claiborne advised one David

McGee in regard to some literary work of the latter: "A love of

letters has not yet gained an ascendency in Louisiana, and I

would advise you to seek for your production the patronage of

some one of the Northern cities."

"How bitter," comments Mr. Gayarré, "is the thought that it is

true! How hard it is for the veracity of the Southern historian

to admit that, even in 1864, a judicious and frank adviser would

be compelled to say to a man of letters, in the language used by

Claiborne in 1814, "I would advise you to seek for your

production the patronage of some one of the Northern cities"!

----

Memorials Of Those Who Suffered For The Faith In Ireland

in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries.

By Myles O'Reilly, B.A., LL.D.

New York: The Catholic Publication Society.

1 vol. 12mo, pp. 462.

An elegant volume, containing biographies of the martyrs of the

Reformation in Ireland, which we intend to notice at length in a

future number.

----

Lectures On The Life, Writings, And Times Of Edmund Burke.

By J. B. Robertson, Esq.

London: John Philp.

For sale by the Catholic Publication Society,

126 Nassau Street, New York.

{718}

In this volume, Professor Robertson, as an extremely conservative

monarchist, and as an enthusiastic admirer of what he calls the

"old temperate monarchy," best typified in modern politics by the

government of England, the native land of the lecturer, treats of

the history of the life, writings, and times of Edmund Burke, the

most illustrious Irishman of the eighteenth century, and, in

purely civil affairs of all times, from a monarchical point of

view; and makes his lectures, which he seems to have designed for

a biography of the greatest of British orators and statesmen,

really the medium of an exposition of his own peculiar doctrines

and opinions in the political relation, with such incidental

notices of the immortal Burke as were deemed pertinent to the

illustration and enforcement of the political speculations of the

gifted lecturer, who appears to live and move in utter awe of

"the spirit of revolution," and in utter detestation of "the

sovereignty of the people" and of "the republic." The book is of

value chiefly as showing how the complex affairs known as

constituting the modern world are viewed by an Englishman of fine

culture, eloquent expression, and very conservative instincts and

sympathies.

The book is got out in Mr. Philp's best style; the paper, type,

and binding are faultless.

----

Sadlier's Catholic Directory, Almanac, And Ordo,

for the year of our Lord 1869.

This work is published in the same style as heretofore, and is,

we presume, about as correct as can be expected of such a

publication. There is one improvement, however, which

_could_ be made at the expense of _one cent_ a copy,

namely, to sew the book instead of _stitching_ it. The way

it is now bound, several pages are defaced by the large holes

punched through the book.

----

A Practical And Theoretical Method

Of Learning The French Language.

By A. Biarnois.

D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1868.

Of all the systems hitherto devised to facilitate the study of

the French language, and at the same time offer to the student a

method which, in its development, will prove attractive to him,

we are inclined to think the present one by M. Biarnois is in

many respects to be preferred.

The idea in the invention of most of the modern systems is a good

one: to give the pupil words and phrases before he is taught the

rules for their grammatical construction. This is the design

proposed by our author, and after an introductory article on

pronunciation he gives us at once a sentence.

"On nous dit que le Sultan Mahmoud, par ses

guerres perpétuelles, au dehors et sa tyrannie

à l'intérieur, avait rempli les

états de ses ancêtres de mine et de desolation;

et avait dépeuplé, l'Empire Persan."

This sentence is thoroughly analyzed, which gives him occasion to

explain:

1. Transposition and contractions of pronouns.

2. The gender and number of substantives.

3. Formation of the feminine of adjectives.

4. Of the plural of adjectives.

5. Place, elision, and contraction of the article.

6. Forms of negation.

7. Possessive pronouns.

8. Possessive, demonstrative, and indefinite

adjectives, with many grammatical

relations of all these.

This is followed by an original set of rules to find French words

to express what we know in English, how to form verbs out of

substantives, and to determine, without a dictionary, the

conjugation to which each of these verbs belongs.

Again we have more phrases, accompanied by running explanatory

notes, and the whole couched in a familiar conversational style

which cannot fail of fixing the attention and impressing the

memory of the student.

The latter half of the work, under the title Recapitulation,

takes up the parts of speech in more regular order.

We confess that for young beginners we would prefer a certain

amount of study in the admirable work of Dr. Emile Otto, as

revised by Mr. Ferdinand Bôcher for English students, before

taking up the method of M. Biarnois. The latter supposes a

considerable advance in the knowledge of the English language,

and he is compelled at the very outset to make use of words and

phrases which, to youthful pupils, might need explanation fully

as much as the corresponding ones in French. But for students in

our colleges, who have already some notion of English or Latin

grammar, we think this grammar of M. Biarnois is one of the best,

and in many respects better than any that have come under our

notice.

----

{719}

Tobacco And Alcohol.

I. It Does Pay To Smoke

II. The Coming Man Will Drink Wine.

By John Fiske, M.A., LL.B.

New York: Leypoldt & Holt. 1869.

It was hardly possible that Mr. Parton's attack on the "smokers

and drinkers" of this generation should pass without a reply. Mr.

Fiske has sprung into the lists, while yet the gauntlet of the

challenger has scarcely reached the ground, and has begun the

battle with a force and vigor which, to say the least, must

temporarily startle his opposers. Scientifically, he appears to

have the advantage. There is very little of assertion; very much

of authority and argument about him. His manner of dealing with

the sweeping statements of his adversary is more effective than

courteous. His theory of the value of alcohol and tobacco, as

stimulants for daily use, is certainly plausible, and must be

welcome to all who either smoke or drink, or who aspire to do so.

Physiologically, also, it appears sound, and in accordance with

the latest therapeutical discoveries. But it will be indeed a

task of difficulty to lead Mr. Parton, or his sympathizers, into

the belief that either smoking or drinking are profitable to

mankind; a task equalled only by that of bringing smokers and

drinkers to observe that golden mean of temperance which even Mr.

Fiske admits to be of indispensable necessity.

But whatever may be the scientific merits of Mr. Fiske's

treatise, we can but feel that, morally, he is on the losing

side. The advantages and disadvantages of tobacco and alcohol are

to be estimated by their effect upon mankind at large, as mankind

uses and will use them, and not by the medical influence they

exercise when taken by the proper persons, in proper quantities,

at proper times. Many things are _per se_ useful and

beneficial which, _as used_, are sources of great injury and

destruction. Some of these can scarcely be used as they ought by

man in general, but become, almost inevitably, the cause of ruin

and disorder. To this class we believe that tobacco and alcohol

belong. Experience seems to teach that their abuse necessarily

follows from their use, and that, whatever their peculiar

beneficial properties, they have been, and still are, among the

worst enemies of man. For this reason we regret to see any

argument put into the mouths of smokers and drinkers, whereby

they can quiet their own consciences or beguile others into

self-indulgence; and we feel that it were safer and better that

the nerve-power of the individual should waste a little faster,

and the stimulus be denied, than that the misery and wretchedness

which tobacco and alcohol have already occasioned should find

either an increase or an apology.

----

A Book About Dominies:

Being the Reflections and Recollections of a

Member of the Profession.

Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1869.

But for one fault this were a charming book. There is a freshness

and genial warmth about it which is very welcome to the heart of

any one who has ever been "a boy." The keen appreciation of the

"boy nature," of the "boy aspirations," of the "boy troubles,"

which the dominie, whose experience is here narrated, seems to

have possessed, gives a rare relish to his sketches, and makes

his book almost a story of the reader's own youth and school

life. For these merits it will be read not once only but often,

and will serve both to maturity and age as "a tale of the times

of old--a memory of the days of other years."

{720}

The fault of which we speak is the tone of religious

sentimentalism which runs through the whole book, and crops out

in various flings at positive religious faith, and in innumerable

expressions of an unhealthy, mawkish, self-congratulating piety.

Latitudinarianism is bad enough, but when it reaches to the open

contempt of dogma, and elevates the undisguised conceit which

despises all authority and law above the humility which

acknowledges some truth outside its own conclusions, it becomes

the worst possible kind of teaching both for boys and men. It is

difficult to realize that the writer of the substance of this

book should also be the author of these dangerous and

disagreeable sentimentalisms.

----

An Illustrated History Of Ireland, from the Earliest Period to

the Present Time.

With several first-class full-page Engravings of Historical

Scenes, designed by Henry Doyle, and engraved by George Hanlon

and George Pearson; together with upward of One Hundred

Woodcuts, by eminent artists, illustrating Antiquities,

Scenery, and Sites of Remarkable Events; and three large Maps,

one of Ireland, and the others of Family Homes, Statistics,

etc.

1 vol. 8vo. Nearly 700 pages, extra cloth.

New York: The Catholic Publication Society,

126 Nassau Street. 1869.

We are glad to see this new and improved edition of this

excellent history of Ireland. The first edition we noticed at

length, on its appearance, some months ago; but the demand for it

was so great that it was soon exhausted. The distinguished

authoress, (Sister Mary Frances Clare,) having made several

additions and improvements, presents us with a finely illustrated

volume, worthy of a place on the shelves of every library, public

or private, in America.

It is very important that the people of the United States should

study the history of Ireland intelligently. They have, as a

people, too long neglected it; and all the greater portion of

them know about Ireland and her history is that which they have

learned out of their school-books, and vitiated novels. In fact,

our public men, writers and speakers alike, have not thought it

worth their while to read Ireland's history; it was, to many of

them, a country beneath their notice, _except to slander_,

by quoting her history from the biased writers of England. But

those times are passed. We now have good histories enough.

Besides, there is no country of Europe that has sent so many of

her people to populate this country; her children or their

descendants are to be found in every town and hamlet from Maine

to Oregon. It is therefore incumbent on _all_ American

citizens, native or adopted, to study the history of that

"Isle of ancient fame,"

whose history is almost as old as that of Judea. We trust that

those who have not yet done so will now procure a copy of this

work. Apart from its intrinsic merits, which are manifold, there

is another which is of some importance. It is sold for the

benefit of the Convent of Poor Clares, Kenmare, Ireland, which

institution gives education to hundreds of poor Irish children.

----

Books Received.

From Ivison, Phinney, Blakeman& Co.:

Analysis of Civil Government: including a topical and tabular

arrangement of the Constitution of the United States. Designed

as a class-book for the use of Grammar, High, and Normal

Schools, Academies, and other institutions of learning.

By Calvin Townsend, Counsellor-at-Law.

New York. 1869.

From Lee & Shepard:

Gloverson and His Silent Partners.

By Ralph Reder. 1869.

Words of Hope. "That ye sorrow not, even as others which

have no hope." 1869.